


Friday Afternoon

by rufeepeach



Series: Time Of Day [15]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:34:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6750403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle is alone in the cinema, and Gold comes to join her. They have some fun in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friday Afternoon

The cinema was empty but for her: no one really watched movies in this town, and the mid-afternoon showing of whatever silly rom-com Belle found herself staring at was never going to attract all that many visitors.

But she’d wanted to be away from the flower shop, away from Ruby and Ashley - who she had lied to a week ago and now still couldn’t be around without wanting to tell them everything - and away from the world in general. She didn’t want to talk to the town that was, supposedly, filled with her friends. She just wanted to be in the dark, on her own.

Except, when her phone buzzed in her lap and she glanced down and read the name, she couldn’t ignore it. She wanted to: she wanted to leave him aside for a bit, show him that while everything was technically resolved between them he couldn’t just expect for her to be okay.

Their last two meetings had been disastrous. Wednesday they had met outside the library, and walked in awkward silence until - instead of leading them to his house - he sighed and circled back, dropping her off at her home instead. Said that it wasn’t time yet, love, that they needed to adjust. He hadn’t even touched her.

He didn’t come by on Sunday, because she called and said she was busy. She couldn’t stand the tension that had descended, the lack of knowledge and the uncertainty of where they started and finished.

She wanted to be on her own.

She wanted to be on her own with him.

It was almost more difficult to navigate this not-relationship, now that there were feelings involved. She had been unhappy, yes, believing that he didn’t love her as she did him, believing that it had no future. That someday he’d break her heart without even knowing, and she’d mourn for something she never really had.

It was worse to know that he loved her too, and that they still couldn’t be together. That they were both suffering, and that simply being together was enough to hurt them both.

What are you doing today?

The text was simple enough, innocuous enough, and if she told him she was simply busy he wouldn’t try again. 

I’m at the cinema, screen 6, some shitty rom-com :(

The little sad face icon at the end took long deliberation: he would come instantly to her side, seeing that. 

The thought gave her a little rush of warmth, affection: he didn’t want to see her unhappy. He didn’t want to be with her in daylight, with professions of love and held-hands and roses, but he didn’t want her hurt either. He cared enough for that; he loved enough for that.

She sent it: he was there within fifteen minutes.

There had been only two others in, and they had sat up front and left midway through. Belle preferred the back row: the view was better, and the sound a little less loud and obnoxious. It allowed for a little more thought, or as much as this brand of movie would allow.

She felt him slip into the seat next to her. He didn’t say a word.

“You’ll hate this film.” She said, after a long moment, her voice barely above a whisper, “Really.”

“Are you enjoying it?” he asked, his voice equally soft.

She gave a little laugh, shook her head, “No. It was just this or a random horror movie and I can’t stand blood. So this’ll do.” She was quiet a moment, and then said, “Why’re you here?”

“Because I miss you, dear, and you sounded lonely.” He said it calmly, evenly, and really it wasn’t fair for him to break her heart again with every word.

“I miss you too.” She said, finally, “I miss things being… easier.”

“Easier and better aren’t always the same thing.” He told her, and before she could ask him how the hell he could count how they lived now as ‘better’, he had continued in a lighter tone, “For example, the poor fellow in this film could simply take the easy route and do his job and go out on a date with a pretty girl from the beginning and not worry about snaring that one woman who said no. But he doesn’t: he would rather something better.”

“And he’s miserable.” she nodded to the screen, where the rather melodramatic hero walked alone in the rain, lamenting about how unloved and unwanted he was.

Gold had turned to look at her, and she could feel his scrutiny, the narrowing of his dark, expressive brown eyes, on the side of her face. But she didn’t turn: she couldn’t bear to look at him when she knew what he was about to ask.

“Are you?” he asked, and his voice was steady for all that it sounded as if it surely ought to break, “Are you miserable, Belle?”

She laughed, because it was such a ridiculous question. He loved her. How could she claim to be truly miserable, knowing that? But then, how could she be happy, knowing that he loved her and it changed nothing at all? He wanted a yes or no answer to a question with a million different solutions. 

“I’m not… unhappy.” She said after a moment, “But you don’t have to be depressed to want things to be different, do you?”

He was silent a moment, and then nodded, “Indeed, not.”

She sighed, flopped back further in her seat, and stared gormlessly at the screen. It was no use: she’d forgotten the plot the moment he sat down. What had been a dull, odd little ache had grown into an acute pain, and she missed him more than she could say.

She missed his smiles, the way he’d open up to her if only for a moment, if only because he was too lost in kissing her, touching her, to keep his guard up. She missed those kisses and touches, too, and the warm, rough feel of his skin on hers. 

As if he could hear the direction of her thoughts, Gold’s hand came out in the dark and covered hers on the armrest. Their fingers wove together easily, until they were simply sat, holding hands in the dark.

He squeezed her hand a moment later, and she was gone.

She could have held her control, held back, let him make the first move, if it hadn’t been for that. They had always communicated this way, this was essentially what they were, and everything seemed to fall to pieces when they stopped fucking and tried to speak.

She swallowed hard, the awkwardness of the last week making nerves where there had once been near-boundless confidence, and moved her hand, so it rested on his thigh.

His fingers were still wrapped around hers, but as she moved her palm and fingers higher on his leg they slipped away, coming to rest on his knee. 

She did not waste time dragging it out, moving slowly or with caution. She stroked his leg a little as she moved higher, but soon her fingers were on his flies - and thank goodness for all the practice she had got in the past six months in undoing his trousers one-handed - and she had gotten the zipper down before his other hand took her wrist.

“Belle,” he started, before she could do anything more, and she knew he meant to stop her. She couldn’t understand why: he had claimed to want their original arrangement to continue. Wasn’t this their way?

She cut him off with a swift kiss to his lips, hard and fast and over in moments. It was enough distraction to slip her hand inside his boxers, and he tried to conceal a gasp as she took hold of him. 

“Rum,” she purred back, trying to sound a lot more seductive than she felt, grasping his cock in the back of a near-empty cinema, “Don’t you miss this too?”

She tugged up, a little harder than was gentle, and he grit his teeth around a groan, “Shhh…” she breathed, “Don’t want to draw attention, do we? Don’t want the attendant to come in.” She smiled, nipped his earlobe and pulled up again, and felt him harden still further in her hand.

He looked down at her, wild-eyes and urgency, “Belle-”

“Ah ah,” she whispered, and waved the index finger of her free hand in his face, teasing, “Just answer the question. Do you miss this too?”

She timed it well with a twist of her wrist as she pulled up her hand around him, and he made a startled little groaning noise in the back of his throat, shifting his hips almost involuntarily, bucking into her hand, “Yes!”

“Thought so,” she murmured, and her smile was genuine relief: she’d worried he might have stopped wanting her, after learning how much she had come to love him. Worried that knowing how deeply she felt would have scared him off. “Now, be quiet, or I’ll have to stop.”

He made a pathetic little whimpering sound, his eyes squeezing shut as he shunted his hips. She have a sharp twist of her wrist as a warning, “I said quiet.”

His eyes met hers again, and she raised her eyebrows. He nodded in agreement, and she smiled, “Good.”

She moved her hand again, moving up his hardening shaft to the head and sliding her thumb through the moisture there before plunging back down. He was shaking, trembling, his eyes squeezed shut and teeth gritted in a desperate attempt to keep quiet. She repeated her motion again, and a third time, until his hands were gripping the armrests with white knuckles, his head thrown back. 

She leaned in and licked and kissed at the tendons drawn taught in his throat, moving up to his ear. A wicked little idea had taken root in her mind, and she breathed, “Open your eyes.”

He did, slowly, and he tried to meet her gaze but her lips were suckling his earlobe, her face hidden in the side of his head, “Look down.”

He swallowed hard, and she started moving her hand again in slower motions, squeezing a little harder as she pumped him with her fist, “Make a sound,” she whispered, “And I’ll stop. But I want you to see, see my hand on your cock in the dark, all public and hidden.” he sighed, but it wasn’t a sound, not really, as she brushed her lips along his neck, “You’re so hot and hard in my hand, Rum,” she purred, softly, “And I missed this too.”

“Wh-” he said, very quietly, “What do you miss?”

He wanted to join in, and he was breaking her rules. He always broke her rules, every firm and steady little guideline she’d laid down, every law she lived by. He smashed through carelessly, and just as now, when his voice was low and deep and dark, she could not find it in her to do more than beg him to do it again.

Loving him was a sickness, but she could never bring herself to cure it.

So she breathed a little laugh, low and husky, “I miss feeling how much you want me, even though you never really say it. I miss watching you let go. You only open up when we’re like this, and-”

He turned and kissed her before she could continue, and she moaned into his mouth as his tongue swept in and silenced all thought, mercilessly exploiting every little sensitive place until she was allowing him to ease her hand away and haul her into his lap.

“Rum…” she moaned, as his hands came instantly up under her skirt, and he smiled against her lips.

“Now, dearie, best be quiet before I stop.” he punctuated the last word with a flick of his fingers through her panties, and she bit down on her lip to keep from whimpering.

“Not fair.” she whispered, and he snickered, moving her knickers aside to slip his hand underneath and get better access.

“You,” he said, “Decided to jerk me off in public, remember?”

“You’re a bastard.” she whispered, but she didn’t mean it, because it was only the truth.

“I’m a believer in turnabout being fair play,” he replied, “Now hold still so I can fuck you senseless in public.”

She stared at him, his fingers hard at work beneath her skirt as she straddled him, her legs on either side of his on the seat. He seemed to be trying simultaneously to pull her panties aside and to drive her utterly insane, with his fingertips stroking her pussy, grazing her clit with his thumb every now and then, making her jerk like a puppet against him.

“Ready?” he asked, as they were finally lined up, his hands on her hips and his cock pressing hard against her soaked entrance.

“Always.” she replied, and knew in that moment that it was true. No matter what happened, she would always be ready for him. To take her or to break her, she honestly couldn’t tell.

He smiled, teeth gleaming in the white-lit darkness, and entered her in one smooth motion, kissing her to hide both her moan and his grunt as he was sheathed inside her. 

He moved slowly, his hands guiding her upwards and back down onto him so they barely made a sound, their thrusts slow and hard, mouths glued together as one of her hands left the back of his seat and came between her legs, rubbing at her clit as she rode him. His teeth were gritted, and she kissed every part of his tense, tortured face, one hand teasing her folds and the other buried in his soft hair.

The pleasure was building and roaring inside her, the slow burn into an inferno in moments, a week of missing him and missing this, of hurt and worry and an insane, painful kind of love twisting and releasing as he pounded mercilessly into her. 

This wild abandonment was what she’d missed most of all. When they were together, when she was biting and licking at his throat, and he was kissing her to keep her quiet, everything was hot and dirty and perfect. She didn’t have to think, because the world was nothing but pleasure and motion. Nothing else mattered.

She could feel herself coming close, and tripled the pressure of her fingers on her clit, their kisses harsh and messy, desperate to keep quiet. He groaned as she swiveled her hips, changing the angle so he was hitting a place inside her that sent fireworks bursting behind her eyelids. 

“Rum…” she whimpered needily, unable to keep quiet, “I… I love… I love you…”

He looked up at her, and she both expected him to stop and desperately hoped he’d respond in kind.

Instead, he slowed inside her, his thumbs caressing her hips and his eyes on her shoulder, her chest, anywhere but her face.

“Oh,” he whispered, “Belle.”

That was all, just her name, whispered like the saddest, most wistful little prayer she’d ever heard.

And that was enough. No matter how wonderful or terrifying the idea of it, that was enough.

He didn’t love her: he claimed to but he didn’t, not truly, not properly. He could say it when he had his suit on, his lies and composure, but she knew him. She knew his truths came out in the passion and the bare skin-on-skin, and here he couldn’t say it.

Perhaps he didn’t want to.

And even knowing that, knowing that this couldn’t be as lovely and simple as she had dreamed, as straightforward as ‘I love yous’ and candlelight and hands clasped between them, she felt nothing but relief that he breathed her name at all.

That was the worst of it, the scariest part of the whole thing. 

She gave a little cry, and she could not say what emotion it contained but she crushed her mouth back to his and slammed her hips down, taking him in as far as she could as he groaned against her mouth. There were no more attempts to be quiet as he pounded up into her, as his mouth slipped from hers and trailed hot, wet kisses along her cheek and jaw, down her neck to the juncture with her shoulder.

She whimpered as she flicked her fingers once, twice, three times, and he was so hard inside her and she was sobbing against him and shaking and coming with a hoarse, stifled little scream, her hand clinging to his shoulder for dear life, nails as claws through his suit jacket.

She felt him deliver one last hard thrust, and he emptied himself inside her as she came down, riding him hard through the waves of her orgasm as he groaned into the side of her throat, leaving nipping, biting kisses as he went.

She could have sworn she heard ‘love’ in amongst his grunting sighs.

But she didn’t dwell on it, because what did it matter?

She exhaled deeply, and let out a shuddering giggle. He looked at her a moment, and then he was laughing too, his forehead pressed against hers, their laughter between them with her arms slung about his neck.

“This,” she whispered, “This I missed.”

“Belle…” his smile had vanished, replaced by a stony kind of sadness, resignation, that made her smile fall too.

“I know.” she nodded, biting behind her lip to keep from crying, sudden and impulsive, utterly childish tears, “I know.”

She clambered off of his lap and hitched her underwear back into position. He looked as if he’d say something more, but she pressed a hard, punishing, silencing kiss to his lips and then ripped herself away.

The couple onscreen kissed and rode off into a halcyon sunset.

Belle turned away, and didn’t look back as she left the theatre.

It was raining outside.


End file.
